One-Hit Wonder

Every now and then a music artist instantly rises to fame for a song they release and then fades away just as quickly. It’s these particular acts that receive the label “one-hit wonder”.

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A friend of ours has had multiple Number One singles on radio. Yet, he shared with us how he couldn’t afford to pay his rent! After we saw his live performance, it made sense as to why. It’s a sad story, but the same can be said for many other music artists with years of radio success. Their songs make a great connection with radio listeners, but they aren’t making a connection with their live audiences. 

Oftentimes, artists can reach a level of “success” and then get complacent and are content to coast – essentially resting on their achievements. I mentioned a legendary rock band way back in my seventh blog post. They didn’t have a successful, 48-year-long career by being complacent. The band continuously worked on every aspect of their live performance, and it paid them great dividends by forming relationships with their fans from the stage. 

One-hit wonders have huge success, and then everyone forgets about them because no one was able to really connect with them in the first place. They fall off the map because their foundation was on sand instead of solid ground. If you continue to develop your live show, if and when the time comes that a song of yours becomes a hit, you will have built a career that can carry it forward. 

For example, the band For King & Country worked on their performance for many years. When “Fix My Eyes” took off on radio in 2014, they already had a solid show, but they continued to master it over the years. Following the success of the song, they swept a lot of the 2015 K-Love Fan Awards winning: Group/Duo Of The Year, Best Live Show and Artist Of The Year.

Since then, the two brothers from “Down Under” – front men Joel and Luke – are currently four-time Grammy Award winners with six nominations. The duet has continued winning the K-Love Fan Awards: Group/Duo Of The Year and Best Live Show in 2016. In 2017, they won Artist Of The Year, Song Of The Year and Group/Duo Of The Year. For King & Country then took a short break from winning in 2018. However, they were right back on top with Song Of The Year and Group/Duo Of The Year in 2019, with Best Live Show no longer listed as a category because my guess is they would continually win it!

It’s a continual pursuit to develop your onstage performance and build a fan base through your live show. This is a longer process, verses possibly writing a hit song that goes viral on the Internet or radio. But, in the long run, you’re forming relationships with people that last and will be building a music career on a solid foundation.

Are you interested in diving deeper into these areas for YOUR show? I’d love to get to know you and learn about your journey in music! Let’s schedule a FREE discovery call today!

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